Absolutely furious at shoddy customer care

[#1]

Yesterday (10th March) my fibre BB stopped working.  After an hour or so I called Plusnet customer services and went through diags with a rep.  He decided it was an authentication fault that needed escalating.  Going by what he had said, I felt it was not right so called in again this morning only to be told my account had been cancelled.  This has now been escalated to the Provisioning Team and could be sorted within 72 hours.  Sequence of events so far (might make you understand my anger):
31st January  signed up through TopCashBack to Plusnet, Paid £220 up front, set up DD for monthly BroadBand.
13th February BT Openreach turned up to install, couldn't find the phone line, aborted.
20th February BT Openreach found the phone line exactly where I had told them it would be.  BB installed but still no Plusnet hub
21st February Unable to log into BB as not Plusnet BB not enabled
21st February - 9th March, service up and running fine.  Actual speed 48Mb/s, estimated was 66Mb/s but hoped DLM would make a difference.  It didn't.  Considered downgrading to 38Mb/s service.  It would appear all of my cooling off period has now expired.
27th February TopCashBack tracked claim of £94.50 declined by Plusnet - no reasons given (although now knowing that my order and account have been cancelled I see why).
10th March BB goes off, CS service rep has me connecting laptop to modem that has no DSL sync light on, wrongly diagnoses issue
11th March CS service rep finds account has been closed and services terminated.  No warning, no emails, no communication.
So I have some questions for Plusnet that are not being answered by CS by phone or livechat:
- Why was my account / order cancelled after it had been provisioned?
- What was done to 'de-provision' my services?
- Why will it take so long to get services back up and running?
- Will Plusnet show good will and sort out my cashback claim?
- Will my billing reflect that I have been without service?
I do have a ticket in, 10 Mar 2015, #100693224 - Awaiting support team answer
Thanks,
Dave

[#2]

It gets better 😉
BT engineer has just called me on my BT line to check that the line they installed on the 20th February is installed or not....
Something tells me this is not going to end any time soon 😞

[#3]

I am investigating this issue for you. I will update this thread at some point this afternoon.
Matty

[#4]

Hi Dave, I'm really sorry for the problems you have had.
Thanks for your patience this afternoon. You have raised a few points here so I'll try to address them in order.

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- Why was my account / order cancelled after it had been provisioned? - What was done to 'de-provision' my services?

This one was frustrating. Your appointment was never signed off by the engineer. This means that although your service was working, your order had never actually completed in our suppliers systems. As a result of this, your order has now timed out, causing the service to switch back off. In a nutshell, we have never had full ownership of your asset (this does mean I can get away with refunding you all the fibre service you've had so far, as we're not paying wholesale).

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- Why will it take so long to get services back up and running?

I have taken Ticket: 100693224 into my ownership. I have replaced an order for you (self install), and as soon as I have the facility to, I will expedite it for the soonest possible date.

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- Will Plusnet show good will and sort out my cashback claim?

This looks like a third party offer. On the day of signup, we had two seperate cashback offers dependent on the package you chose, which offered either £35 or £25 respectively. I recommend that you get in touch with TopCashBack to sort this.

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- Will my billing reflect that I have been without service?

I will refund as accordingly. Though as I previously said, I'll go one better and refund the fibre portion where you have been in service.
I've tried calling you on your mobile to discuss, though it went straight to my voicemail so it may have been a signal problem.
Matty

[#5]

Hi Matty, Thanks for taking ownership of this problem.  I do understand that this is obviously a communication issue between BT Wholesale and Plusnet, however, it's me that is stuck in the middle of it all with no service and quite deeply out of pocket (eg, lots of incovenience, can't do any work, can't do my uni studies (CCNA, Netacad) and can't get cashback and have paid 12 months of line rental, installation etc - plus am over my cooling off period so can't even cancel (which I don't want to do but it's no longer an option on the table should the need have arisen).
What I don't understand is the time required to enable the service again.  The physical cable is in place, the hardware is in my home, the account was all up and running and changes required in the cabinet/exchange were all done too.  So is it not a matter of someone just flicking a switch?
The fact you have said "I have replaced an order for you (self install), and as soon as I have the facility to, I will expedite it for the soonest possible date" obviously means that this is not going to be on today.  Are we talking days, weeks, months - from your experience, how long would something like this usually take?  I'll obviously not hold you to any answer you can give but it would be nice to at least have some idea so I can decide if i need to make temporary provisions.  Thethering from my mobile is not only painfully slow, it's also going to cost me an arm and a leg if / when I go over my data allowance.
I am in a poor signal area in some parts of my home - calling me is hit and miss (sorry).
Regards,
Dave

[#6]

Thanks for getting back to us.

Quote from: starteck2002

What I don't understand is the time required to enable the service again.  The physical cable is in place, the hardware is in my home, the account was all up and running and changes required in the cabinet/exchange were all done too.  So is it not a matter of someone just flicking a switch?

To my knowledge, the asset is basically ceased so we are back at square one other than the internal work. I certainly can't imagine your line occupying one of the ports in the cabinet if you don't have an active FTTC asset, though I could be wrong (maybe the community will correct me on this one).
Whilst I understand that it's frustrating, I have to be honest with the likely lead times (particularly if you are intent on making provisions) and say that it's likely to be either Friday or Monday. No doubt I'll be aiming for the former.

Quote from: starteck2002

Are we talking days, weeks, months - from your experience, how long would something like this usually take?  I'll obviously not hold you to any answer you can give but it would be nice to at least have some idea so I can decide if i need to make temporary provisions

What I am waiting for is the order I've placed to reach a stage of committal in Openreach's system. Once this has been done, we have the option to expedite to a date sooner than the traditional 5 working day lead time. We train the CSC to say that it should be set within 24 hours, though in my experience it can happen sooner than that. I'm on overtime tonight dealing with new provisions so I'll keep checking back on an hourly basis up until 8pm. Realistically it'll be tomorrow though.
Once again, apologies that this has happened.
Matty

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Thanks for speaking with me this evening 
Keep us posted for how everything goes on Friday.

[#7]

Hi Matty,
Just wanted to let you know that my DSL light is on and we are now back on the web 🙂  Speeds are somewhat slower but i suspect this is the DLM doing it's stuff?
Thanks for being so proactive and getting this sorted so quickly once the issue was known/realised.
Dave

[#8]

Well that's a pleasant surprise! Though I did give the guy at Openreach hell when I called up to expedite the order.
It's probably DLM, however as we still don't properly own your asset, I don't have the privilege of being able to test it. I'm still gonna keep my eyes on this until your order is actually showing as complete this time for avoidance of what happened last time
Matty